ABSTRACT
Philanthropic giving by the wealthy has a well-established history in America. In the late nineteenth century, industrialists offered up goodly portions of their millions to establish endowments that today continue to fund laudable causes such as hospitals, libraries, universities, parks, and research facilities. The self-educated Andrew Carnegie, for instance, helped establish over 5,500 public and university libraries around the world with generous gifts of cash. At the same time that he was dedicated to helping the working class to improve themselves through books, however, Carnegie also was giving large sums to establish and maintain more questionable ventures such as the Eugenics Record Offi ce at Cold Springs Harbor on Long Island, which helped establish ‘scientifi c racism’ as the prevailing rationalization for Jim Crow segregation policies and laws during the fi rst half of the twentieth century. Lead eugenicist Charles Davenport even became director of the Carnegie Institution in Washington, D. C., at the same time he was publishing ‘scientifi c fi ndings’ on the dangers of race mixing. Such manipulated fi ndings were instrumental, nonetheless, in the passage of antimiscegenation laws and the human sterilization laws in many states.2
